"The Mathematical Physicist plays a part of supreme importance as an intermediary and interpreter between the Pure Mathematician and the experimental Physicist. ...he must follow... progress both in Mathematics... and in experimental Physics. ...[I]n spite of some brilliant exceptions, the Mathematical Physicist does not... take as prominent a part as was formerly the case, especially during the nineteenth century, the age of Maxwell, Kelvin, Stokes, Helmholtz. ...In earlier times, when ...molar mechanics, and especially , occupied the centre of the interests... the passage from the observation of concrete phenomena to their abstract Mathematical representation was comparatively easy. The observational work was simpler and less technical... highly equipped physical laboratories had not yet come into existence... The Mathematical Physicists and Astronomers of the eighteenth century were largely engaged in working out the detailed implications of the law of gravitation, and had commenced, largely under the influence of the idea of , to work out problems such as... the vibrations of strings and other bodies."
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Mathematics, from the points of view of the Mathematician and of the Physicist
Mathematics, from the points of view of the Mathematician and of the Physicist: An address delivered to the Mathematical and Physical Society of University College, London by E. W. Hobson, Sc.D., LL.D., F.R.S., in the University of Cambridge, was published at the University Press, Cambridge in 1912.
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